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WenZPerl Donate 10,000 EUR to new Perl 6 Core Development Fund

I am pleased to announce the launch of a new fundraising drive to raise money for Perl 6 development. Its immediate focus is the target of releasing a Perl 6 language specification along with a conforming implementation in 2015; beyond this, funds will be used to support maintenance and improvement of Perl 6 implementation.

The initial goal is to raise $25,000 to fund the work of Jonathan Worthington. Jonathan is a core developer of the Rakudo Perl 6 compiler and the architect and lead developer of MoarVM.

We would not have been able to create this fund without the generous donation of 10,000 EUR pledged by WenZPerl. If you are interested in supporting the Perl 6 Core Development Fund please contact karen (at) perlfoundation.org.

Outreachy, Summer 2015

I am pleased to announce that we will be taking part in Outreachy, the successor to the GNOME Outreach Program for Women. The application period is now open for women and members of underrepresented groups looking for a summer internship working on a Perl related project. The internship will take place from May 25th 2015 to the 25th August 2015. The internship pays a stipend of $5,500 and the intern is expected to work full-time on the project. The deadline for applications is the 24th March. Full details of the eligibility requirements and how to apply for an internship can be found on the program website.

Fosdem 2015: It's Christmas!

FOSDEM is probably the world's largest fully Open Source tech conference held in Brussels at the end of January and start of February. There are a number of development rooms at FOSDEM and some main tracks. The largest auditorium at FOSDEM is in the Janson building it holds approximately 1,400 people. In 2015 Perl had two talks in the Janson building back to back on the Sunday afternoon.

Dana gave an excellent talk that went deep into the design choices and implementation of his number theory module and the choices that either restricted or enabled him in doing so.

Larry made a rather special announcement during his talk which was based on a wonderful analogy using Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit to represent Perl6 and Perl5 respectively. The Perl6 team will attempt to get a development release of version 1.0 available for Larry's birthday in September and a Version 1.0 release by Christmas. So it looks like Christmas 2015 was the Christmas that we were expecting.

Outreach Program for Women - Winter Program has Started

I am pleased to announce that we have 3 interns taking part in the current round of the GNOME Outreach Program for Women. The program will run from the 9th December 2014 until the 9th March 2015. When we announced that we would be taking part in the program again we had funding for one intern. There is additional funding available for good candidates and thanks to the generosity of the GNOME Foundation and their sponsors we have three interns this round.

Snigdha Dagar will be working with her mentor Sawyer X on Dancer. We have two MetaCPAN interns, Rose Ames and Andreea Monica Pirvulescu who will be working with Olaf Alders and Matt Phillips.

Outreach Program for Women, Winter 2014

I am thrilled to announce that we will be taking part in the next round of the GNOME Outreach Program for Women. The application period is now open for women looking for a winter internship working on a Perl related project. The internship will take place from December 9th 2014 to March the 9th 2015. The internship pays a stipend of $5,500 and the intern is expected to work full-time on the project. The deadline for applications is the 22nd October. Full details of the eligibility requirements and how to apply for an internship can be found on the program website.

YAPC::NA::2015 will be in Salt Lake City, Utah

The Salt Lake Perl Mongers User Group has been selected to host YAPC::NA::2015. The conference will take place from June 8-10th, 2015. The Salt Lake Perl Mongers and the local Provo Linux Users Group will combine to host this national event.

YAPC::NA::2014 is Over

Now that YAPC::NA is over we’d like to thank all the organisers who worked so hard to make it a success. We had some great speakers this year and if you missed the conference all the talks were recorded and can be seen here:

Outreach Program for Women Internship Begins

I would like to congratulate Pattawan Kaewduangdee on her successful application to work with Perl in the current round of the Outreach Program for Women. Pattawan will begin her internship working on MetaCPAN on May 19th with Olaf Alders as her mentor.

We wouldn't be able to take part in this program without the support of our sponsors or the support of the mentors. I would like to thank Olaf and the team at MetaCPAN for all the work they have put into this program. I would also like to thank Sawyer for his help with the program and for agreeing to be a mentor for Dancer.

New Secretary Elected for Grants Committee

We are pleased to announce that Makoto Nozaki has been elected as the new Secretary of the Grants Committee.

Makoto has a background in project management and has been an integral part of the Grants Committee as a Grant Manager, where all of his managed grants have been completed successfully.

The outgoing Secretary, Alberto Simões, has held this position since October 2007. We would like to thank Alberto for his great work and the many years he dedicated to this role. Alberto is going to remain as a member of the Grants Committee.

YAPC::NA::2014 will be in Orlando, Florida

The Perl Foundation can confirm that the 2014 Yet Another Perl Conference North America (YAPC::NA) will be held in the city of Orlando, Florida. The following dates have been confirmed by the organisers:

YAPC::NA::2014 will be in Orlando, Florida

It is with pleasure that TPF (The Perl Foundation) announces the 2014 Yet Another Perl Conference North America (YAPC::NA) will be held in the city of Orlando, Florida. Details concerning the date and time are being finalized but we expect it to be in the second half of June, in the Florida Hotel and Conference Center (Hotel and Conference centre).

YAPC::NA::2014 will be hosted by the Orlando Perl Mongers (Orlando.pm) and the members of Dahut Perl Mongers (Dahut.pm). Chris Prather is the lead organizer. This is Chris' second time organizing YAPC::NA (after a successful Asheville debut in 2011). He is also the organizer of the very popular yearly Perl Oasis held in Orlando in January.

Chris is a member and a Director of the Enlightened Perl Organization, a member of the TPF Marketing Committee, and a leading member of several community projects. He is also a director of Tamarou, a successful Perl consultancy.

TPF is committed to furthering the efforts made in recent years to reach out to the community and businesses that make up the Perl world. In 2014 we’ll forge new working links among our valued partners, the community, and TPF.

As part of that effort, this year also marks a new level of participation by TPF in YAPC::NA. Several TPF committees will be taking a more active role in supporting the organizers of the conference. The event will be an unmissable landmark in the technical calendar. All of the teams will work together but you can reach each of them through their Chairs:

Outreach Program for Women

We will be taking part in the current round of the Free and Open Source Outreach Program for Women. This successful program was started in 2006 by the GNOME Foundation to encourage women to participate in the FOSS community. This round of the program is open to women looking for internships between June and September of 2013. Full details of the eligibility requirements can be found on the program website.

We are looking for mentors and project ideas for the interns and also help with the coordination of this project. If you are interested in helping out in any way please contact karen(at)perlfoundation.org

At present we have the funding for one intern. If you or your company would be interested in sponsoring this project so that more interns could be funded please contact karen(at)perlfoundation.org

YAPC::NA Extends the call for speakers

The YAPC::NA organisers have announced they are moving the deadline for the call for speakers to the end of this month (March).

"YAPC loves to see new speakers. If you were considering a talk, but just haven’t gotten the right words down on paper to describe it, submit your talk anyway. If you’ve never spoken at YAPC and you’re nervous about the topic you want to do, say so in the comments section (only the organizers will see this) and we’ll try to get you the help you need to get it polished. This could include getting you with someone to help review your slides, or even finding someone who can help you with a talk walk through."

Happy Birthday Perl!

Today is Perl's 25th Anniversary. There is much that could be said regarding Perl's history and if you are interested in reading about that Mark has written a detailed post for our blog.

I would like to congratulate Larry Wall and to thank him for this gift and his inspiration. I would also like to congratulate all those who have contributed in any way to the development of Perl. It's been an amazing journey and I look forward to seeing where it takes us over the coming years.

Perl Survey

You can help with a PhD students survey into Newcomer experience in open source.

If you have joined the Perl community within the last 2 years, we would like to invite you to complete this online survey. It is interested in hearing from people who are either technical or non-technical contributors, and who have had either positive or negative newcomer experiences.

The data you provide will help gain insights about the experience of newcomers within the Perl community. It will also be used to improve the survey before it is later administered to contributors from other FOSS projects.

Please consider filling this in and spreading the word about it. The survey can be found here, and should take no longer than 20 minutes of your time to complete.

TPF Conference Chair

The Perl Foundation would like to congratulate Heath Bair (Candybar) on his election to the position of YAPC (NA) Conference Chair.

Our previous chair, Josh, had served in this position for a number of years, but signalled at the start of this year that he would have to move on and allow someone else to take up the standard. Heath rose to the challenge.

Heath has already indicated that he will be building upon the work done by Josh and has some fresh ideas to further inspire a growing conference event. He is keen to utilise the skills of previous organisers and integrate the abilities of future staff.

White Camel

The Perl Foundation would like to congratulate this year's winners of the prestigious White Camel awards for services to the Perl Community. This year the awards went to Renée Bäcker ($foo magazin, YAPC::EU::2012, German Perl Mongers); Breno G. de Oliveira (Perl SDK, YAPC::Brasil::2011) and Jim Keenan (NY.pm).

All three of whom have been active in their local communities and in the broader Perl world and have given years of silent service to furthering our world. Well done, well deserved.

YAPC::NA::2012

Today is the last day of the YAPC::NA::2012 and we at the Perl Foundation would like to thank JT and his team for putting on an excellent event.

I am sure there will be a number of good blogs and social media reports about the event in the coming days/weeks and I look forward to reading them. In the meantime we look forward to the final day of this year's conference and to praising the organisers for a ground-breaking show.